Tag Archives: Prototyping

Rapid Prototyping with Tom Chi

Jennifer Blatz UX Design presentation
Sharing with your team when they cannot participate in an event or workshop is a good skill to have in your UX Designer toolbox.

Our office recently had the honor of hosting renowned GoogleX prototyper Tom Chi. He came in to our office to work with Product Managers on learning the value of testing fast and testing now! I had a chance to participate in the session as both a user, working through prototypes, and as part of a team building the prototypes for testing.

I have to admit a lot of what Tom covered was not completely new:

  • Find the quickest path to the experience
  • Test early and test often
  • Don’t guess. Learn
  • Don’t “fail.” Learn
  • Stop talking and start doing
  • Get in front of your users and get their feedback

But there were a couple of concepts that really resonated with me and thought they provided value to the session.

Drive conjectures to experiments. Experiments drive decisions.

Conjectures are the same thing as guesses. In other words, people tend to get stuck in “analysis paralysis” and over talking about the situation. In fact, a lot of these discussions are not reality based and is a process of throwing out personals opinions. It might be driven by the best intentions. But these conversations often go on for too long and are never backed up by actual user research. So encourage your group to stop talking and start doing.

The way we did this in the Tom Chi Prototyping session was to stop talking and we each sketched ideas quietly for 3 minutes. They key here is to sketch individually in silence. There should be no talking during the sketching exercise so that each person is exploring individual ideas without the influence from others. After sketching, the ideas are then shared with the group. One or more idea is selected as the “champion.” And this this rough sketch is what should be tested with users. No need to create a higher fidelity version of the sketch. Just show them the rough sketch and get quick feedback before you are too emotionally and technically invested.

Focus on people’s energy

Whenever there is energy, that means something that matters is happening. This energy can be positive or negative. When a customer gets exciting about something, pay attention to that. And the same is true when they show angry excitement as well. It’s these magic “energy” moments that really improve or ruin an experience. So tweak those energy points to make them awesome. One particular example Tom Chi mentioned was Uber. Most of the Uber experience is just like riding in a cab. It’s the few seconds that are different in that experience is what matters.

Don’t lead the witness

Finally, I want to talk about one lesson I learned by going through these sessions. Most of the people participating in our sessions were not researchers. In fact, there were product managers and designers. These are empathetic people who are excited about getting great feedback from users. But they don’t understand that the way they ask questions can skew the response from the participant. It is better to ask broad, open-ended questions rather than helping the participants by giving them examples. It is these tactics that researchers know how to do, but others might not know. They don’t understand that by providing examples for the person to think about, they might be blocking other examples they could possibly come up with on their own. With a little coaching, I know that product managers, designers and other non researchers can learn effective ways to ask non-leading questions.

Take away

I thought the most valuable aspect of bringing Tom Chi in house was to empower non-designers. I think he gave everyone confidence that they can explore ideas, sketch the ideas, and get quick feedback from customers. I hope this process takes off and continues well in to the future.

To read more of my notes, read the Tom Chi Prototyping Workshop presentation that I shared with my team.

 

Prototyping tips: What you should know after a session

User Testing recently published a handy guide on prototyping called “Getting out of the office: Testing mobile app prototypes with user”.

Here are a few pointers of what you should know after prototyping your project.

When you’re finished testing at this stage, you should be able to answer these questions to validate your concept before moving forward to a higher fidelity prototype:

  1. What problem does your idea solve?
  2. How are users solving this problem currently?
  3. Can your target market think of another product that does something similar?
  4. How have previous solutions failed?
  5. Do users understand what this product or service does?
  6. How do users feel about the product or service?
  7. Who is your competition?
  8. What is the app for? What can users do with it?
  9. Does your target market actually have a need for this product?
  10. What devices do users imagine themselves using when they interact with this product?
  11. What scenarios can they picture themselves using it in?

Prototyping canvas explanation

This graphic is part of the Prototyping class I am taking offered for FREE at iversity.com. I find this simple chart, that a person would fill out, is a good exercise in really getting your thoughts out on paper. I am finding that it is helpful to actually get the idea out of your head, and force yourself to get the ideas out on paper. And it is great to really push yourself to come up with more than one idea. Go for it! And use the chart below to explore the reasons and products you will need for your next prototype.

Frank Kloos: prototyping canvas explanation

Prototyping canvas worksheet Jennifer Blatz UX design

Getting excited about my next class on prototyping

I wil leb starting my next California State Fullerton class very soon. It’s called Prototyping User-Centered Design Solutions and obviously it involved prototyping. I am excited to be learning more about this great field and to hopefully gain some skills that will be applicable to a new job. Below is the text book for the class.

Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide. Textbook for class for Jennifer Blatz UX Design
Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide textbook for class.